The Vibrant Military (and Criminal) Activities Across the Caribbean Sea

By Wilder Alejandro Sánchez

Written by Wilder Alejandro Sanchez, The Southern Tide addresses maritime security issues throughout Latin America and the Caribbean. The column discusses regional navies’ challenges, including limited defense budgets, inter-state tensions, and transnational crimes. It also examines how these challenges influence current and future defense strategies, platform acquisitions, and relations with global powers.

Whether [working] against COVID, transnational criminal organizations, the predatory actions of China, the malign influence of Russia, or natural disasters, there’s nothing we cannot overcome or achieve through an integrated response with our interagency allies and partners.” – General Laura J. Richardson, Commander, U.S. Southern Command

While the Caribbean Sea is currently not as dangerous as the Black Sea or the Red Sea, from combating drug trafficking and illegal fishing to humanitarian assistance/disaster relief operations to a belligerent Nicolas Maduro regime in Venezuela, Caribbean naval forces have many daily missions and priorities. The United States, via US Southern Command and the US Coast Guard, and the armed forces of France, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom – which have overseas territories across the Caribbean – are all present across Caribbean waters and are critical partners of regional defense forces.

This commentary briefly summarizes the joint military Caribbean exercises scheduled for 2024 and other recent high-level meetings to understand the concrete actions regional armed forces are carrying out to tackle the region’s threats and challenges.

Exercises and Training…

Two major multinational military exercises will take place in the Caribbean. Later this year, the US-sponsored multinational military exercise Tradewinds 2024 will occur, with Barbados serving as the host. The Main Planning Conference (MPC) commenced in Bridgetown on January 29. “The main planning conference for Tradewinds 24 underscores our collective commitment to fostering regional security and stability,” said Maj. Angela Valcin, the US Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) lead planner for Tradewinds 2024. The following “pivotal juncture” in the Tradewinds planning process will be the final planning conference in March, explained the Command.

Also this year, France will organize the multinational Caribbean exercise Caraibes 2024, which will take place on June 1-6. The January 23-24 planning conference held at the Joint Staff of the Forces Armées aux Antilles had representatives of the armed forces from the United States, Canada, Colombia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the Netherlands, as well as numerous other state partners and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). The maneuvers are focused “on a scenario involving assistance to the population following a natural disaster affecting the French Caribbean islands.”

Caribbean navies, along with several partners, also train via exercise Event Horizon, a multinational, multi-agency event aimed at strengthening the capacity of Caribbean and Central American countries in areas like maritime law enforcement, aeronautical and maritime research, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR). The 2024 version of the exercise included troops and assets from the Royal Bahamas Defence Force (RBDF), Jamaica Defence Force (JDF), Cayman Island Coast Guard, Turk and Caicos Islands Regiment, the Dominican Republic Navy, and the Belize Coast Guard, in addition to the Colombian Navy and Canadian Armed Forces.

Bilateral maneuvers also occur with regularity, including passing exercises (PASSEX). The French patrol vessel La Combattante trained with the Colombian Oceanic Patrol Vessel ARC Victoria as part of exercise Royal Tucan in January 2024. A Colombian aircraft of undisclosed model and ships assigned to the Colombian Coast Guard also participated in the Caribbean exercises. “Operation Toucan Royal is part of a strategy to combat drug trafficking by sea and its related crimes;” the two navies are engaged in “operational and naval training activities… to enhance the capabilities of the two institutions and improve interoperability,” explained the Colombian Navy. Royal Tucan 2024 was the second iteration of the exercise.

In other words, there is plenty of year-round training across Caribbean waters. The three major Caribbean-focused multinational maneuvers are Tradewinds, Caraibes, and Event Horizon, but there are several bilateral exercises, such as Royal Tucan. (While a land-based exercise, it is also worth mentioning exercise Red Stripe between the JDF and British Army, which took place in January 2024.)

….And Meetings

Finally, while summits between Caribbean presidents and prime ministers with their US and European peers do not occur often, there is robust communication between these militaries. Just this past January, the 4th United Kingdom and Caribbean Heads of Defence Conference took place in Guyana to discuss issues including regional security.

As for the US, Southern Command’s commander, US Army General Laura Richardson, participated in the Caribbean Nations Security Conference 2023, co-organized by Southern Command and the Jamaica Defence Force, last June 2023. A total of 16 nations from across the Caribbean, plus the United States, participated. More recently, the 2023 Caribbean-US High-Level Security Cooperation Dialogue took place last November. A dialogue statement announced how the participating governments pledged to cooperate on issues like maritime law enforcement and maritime security and defense. Specific topics addressed included commencing the implementation of the Caribbean Maritime Security Strategy “to advance sustainable and complementary defense and law enforcement cooperation, improve maritime operational capacity and security,” and also to “employ Maritime Domain Awareness (MDA) technology to identify and disrupt illicit networks and more effectively detect illicit maritime activity throughout the Region.”

The examples above highlight constant communication, apart from training, between Caribbean defense forces and their partners.

Ships and More Ships

Apart from the importance of training and high-level meetings, several Caribbean defense forces are in the process of obtaining new vessels to modernize their fleets: the Guyana Defence Force is awaiting to receive a patrol vessel purchased from the US shipyard Metal Shark; the Royal Bahamas Defence Force has purchased four craft from Safe Boats International; and the Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) commissioned its new offshore patrol vessel, HMJS Norman Stanley, in November 2023. While acquisition programs are not as splendid as those of global naval powers or regional powers like Brazil, which is domestically manufacturing submarines and frigates, Caribbean militaries are slowly revamping their naval fleets. With that said, regional militaries require more (modern) ships at sea to properly patrol their vast territorial waters and exclusive economic zones.

The limited size of Caribbean fleets means that regional and extra-regional partners are critical partners. SOUTHCOM, via the US Fourth Fleet and the US Coast Guard, already carries out continuous operations across the Caribbean. (In previous analyses for CIMSEC, the author had proposed that SOUTHCOM should be permanently assigned a hospital ship and one, if not two, littoral combat ships.) Similarly, the three European states with Caribbean territories deploy assets to the region. The Netherlands, for example, has a rotating offshore patrol vessel in the Dutch Caribbean, in addition to the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard. In January, the Dutch military’s General Atomic MQ9 Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles flew their final surveillance missions across the Dutch Caribbean before their new deployment in Romania. 

Analysis

While the Caribbean does not receive the attention it deserves in Washington, militaries and coast guards have been active across these waters in January 2024 alone, with several important maritime operations: the Dutch Caribbean Coast Guard deployed a Metal Shark patrol vessel and a helo to intercept a small speedboat between Little Curacao and Curacao islands; aboard were packages totaling over 218 kilograms of cocaine. Similarly, The JDF Coast Guard intercepted a vessel transporting “2,600 pounds of ganja;” the operation represents “a major dent against the drug-for-guns trade between Jamaica and Haiti.” As the violence and instability in Haiti will not improve anytime soon, it is important for Caribbean navies and coast guards to have larger, and more modern, maritime and air assets to patrol their own waters to combat crimes related to Haiti.

Also in January, the US Coast Guard Cutter Resolute (WMEC 620) docked in Saint Petersburg, Florida, completing a 60-day mission. The Cutter unloaded “approximately $55 million worth of illicit narcotics” during its operations as part of Joint Interagency Task Force-South. The same month, the Coast Guard Cutter Margaret Norvell (WPC-1105) “offloaded more than 2,450 pounds of cocaine with an assessed street value of approximately $32.2 million” in two separate missions. Drug trafficking continues to be rampant across the Caribbean waters. Hence, Navy and Coast Guard vessels voyaging the seas, not to mention maritime patrol aircraft and UAVs serving as a vital eye in the sky, are necessary to crack down on this never-ending crime. Vessels and supporting aircraft are essential to combat other maritime crimes, such as illegal, unregulated, and unreported fishing, piracy, or smuggling of weapons or human trafficking.

Moreover, HADR operations are vital during the annual hurricane season in the summer months. Past hurricanes like Irma in 2017Dorian in 2019, and Eta and Iota in 2020 devastated Caribbean islands and Central America. As this article was being written, the international media reported that scientists are proposing hurricanes have a Category 6 (the current maximum is Category 5), given that climate change will increase their strength and destructiveness in the coming years. Cooperation and experience to work jointly will be critical when, inevitably, Category 6 hurricanes hit the Caribbean and militaries, including extra-regional partners, are deployed to the frontlines of HADR operations.

While inter-state conflict remains unlikely, the Maduro regime in Venezuela remains a security concern, certainly not for the United States, with threats to neighboring military-weaker Guyana especially concerning. The collusion between the Maduro regime and drug-trafficking cartels makes the regime even more of a regional and global concern. In late 2023, the British patrol vessel HMS Trent voyaged by Guyanese waters to support Georgetown against controversial and belligerent statements and actions by the Nicolas Maduro regime, including a December 2023 referendum.

This year is already shaping up to be full of capacity training and joint interoperability training for Caribbean naval forces, given exercises Tradewinds, Caraibes, and Event Horizon, not to mention several bilateral exercises. While the situation across the Caribbean is not as dire as the Black Sea or the Red Sea, its geographical proximity to the US, the plethora of regional allies, the ever-present drug trafficking (among other crimes), and upcoming natural disasters mean that Washington should provide relevant agencies and partners with more assets and resources.

Wilder Alejandro Sánchez is an analyst who focuses on international defense, security, and geopolitical issues across the Western Hemisphere, Central Asia, and Eastern Europe. He is the President of Second Floor Strategies, a consulting firm in Washington, DC, and a non-resident Senior Associate at the Americas Program, Center for Strategic and International Studies. Follow him on X/Twitter: @W_Alex_Sanchez.

Featured Image: Belize Defense Force, Meixcan Marines, and US Marines conduct culminating exercises including vehicle takedown, search and seizure, arrest, riot control, and building raids May 19, 2022 at Belize Police Training Academy for Tradewinds 2022 (Belizian government photo by Spc. Emiliano Alcorta). 

Rear Admiral Dave Oliver and Anand Toprani on American Defense Reform

By Christopher Nelson

Can we reform the Department of Defense and the Navy? In their new book, American Defense Reform: Lessons from Failure and Success, Admiral Dave Oliver (ret.) and Dr. Anand Toprani make a spirited argument that, yes, we can.

But it won’t be easy. Oliver and Toprani outline four key disruptive historical events in the Navy—the 1940s Revolt of the Admirals, the McNamara Revolution in systems analysis, the fallout from the Vietnam War, and the end of the Cold War. From these events, the authors note that reform in the Navy and the Defense Department will require collaboration among Congressional members, the White House, the Department’s senior uniformed and civilian leaders, and collaboration with industry and the private sector. In this conversation, the authors discuss their new book along with a wide range of topics, including the future of the Navy, its good and bad leaders, thoughts on Admiral Hyman Rickover, and useful reading recommendations.

How did you two meet and develop the idea for this book? 

We met during a series of Naval War College discussions regarding the future of the U.S. Navy. We quickly found we had a compatible background. Dave had served six tours in the Pentagon and been a political appointee and corporate leader. Anand was an historian with special interest in naval history after World War II. Both of us wanted to understand why imposing change on the military had not worked in the past. Since the naval services – the Navy and the Marines – operate in all of the major domains of war (air, land, and sea), we wondered if it might not well serve as a microcosm of understanding the challenge of managing the defense establishment.

We postulated that a review of what the Navy did well or poorly during three major fiscal challenges since 1945 – the end of World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War – might disclose best practices and point to a way ahead for leaders who wanted to embark upon major changes of the Department of Defense. At the same time, we recognized we could not limit our analysis to the past – we needed to examine the strengths and weaknesses of the various contemporary actors who might push change, such as political appointees, Congress, and the private sector. 

Historians regularly rank U.S. Presidents. So, if you were to argue for your top two or three men who were the Secretary of Defense and the top two CNOs, who are they and why?

This query gets at why we were able to produce such a strong book. Because we had strong and sometimes divergent viewpoints that we only reconciled after additional research and discussion, our book ends up reflecting the best attributes of our varied experiences as a practitioner, on the one hand, and a scholar, on the other.

To address your specific question, Anand believes that Forrest Sherman was probably the most skilled CNO of the post-WWII era. He was a bona fide strategic thinker and a skilled bureaucratic operator. He repaired the damage of the “Revolt of the Admirals” with Defense Secretary Louis Johnson and saved naval aviation even before the Korean War began. Finally, he secured the construction of the Forrestal class of supercarriers but had the presence of mind not to feud with the Air Force by constructing the carriers in such a way as to launch long-range nuclear strikes.

Dave interviewed or worked with Arleigh Burke, George Anderson, Dave McDonald, Elmo Zumwalt, Jim Watkins, Carlisle Trost, Frank Kelso, Mike Boorda, Jay Johnson, and Vern Clark. Of these extraordinary men, he has long placed Zumwalt and Kelso in the front rank, for reasons that we make clear in our book.

Just as with CNOs, Dave and Anand have different views about what makes an effective SECDEF. Anand is convinced that the smartest SECDEF hands down is Harold Brown. He didn’t revolutionize how the Pentagon operated, but he did make many of the technological investments that the Reagan Administration exploited a decade later. Moreover, despite his brilliance, he was open minded about alternative viewpoints, provided his critics made a strong argument. For example, when the Navy pushed back against the idea that it should play only a supporting role in the defense of Europe, Brown gave his SECNAV, Graham Claytor, the authority to commission a study questioning OSD’s assumptions. He also came around to the need for a more proactive naval policy by the end of the Carter Administration. Finally, Brown recognized the essential fact that you cannot run defense like a business, and that a certain inefficiency is the price we pay for living in a democratic society.

Dave worked for and knew Mel Laird, Dick Cheney, Les Aspin, Bill Perry, Bill Cohen, and Donald Rumsfeld. He has long been impressed with the many accomplishments of Bill Perry and hope that future scholars will explore discontinuity between Dick Cheney’s performance as Secretary of Defense and his service as Vice President. 

And the two or three worst?

People do their best, and few people leave the Pentagon with their reputations enhanced. That said, Anand thinks that Caspar Weinberger misunderstood his role. Weinberger appeared to see his job as being an advocate for higher defense budgets and was desperate to avoid the taint of being “another McNamara.” Consequently, Weinberger failed to exercise leadership by asking why the services were making their specific budget choices, and whether each service’s decisions complemented those of the other services. Consequently, one can make a good case that the country did not get the return on investment it deserved during the 1980s.

Dave believes that an extraordinary book is still waiting to be written that explains why a man with all of Donald Rumsfeld’s experience, charisma, intellect, and charm was unable to lead the Department of Defense. 

Who was William Edwards Demming? How did he influence Admiral Kelso’s leadership style? 

Demming was the statistician and engineer who went to Japan and provided the Japanese with guidance (Total Quality Management) that was vital to the reconstruction of their shattered industrial sector. He then returned to the United States to espouse the same principles to U.S. industry, but found few takers at a time when U.S. firms were globally dominant and saw little need to innovate. Nevertheless, Demming’s principles were consistent with the precise demands of nuclear power that Hyman Rickover was espousing. When Total Quality Management was combined with the concept of Six Sigma originated by Bill Smith (most famously of Motorola), certain sectors of American industry took an enormous surge forward. (This is discussed at some length in Dave Oliver’s Bronze Rules, Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 2021, pgs. 145-152.)

The impact of these three men – Demming, Rickover, and Smith – on American industry during the last century cannot be overstated. That said, Demming and Smith’s concepts were intended to guide aid in the production of manufactured items and have only a peripheral application to defense matters. Admiral Kelso may have overhyped the potential impact of Total Quality Management, but it is impossible to make an accurate judgment since this imitative was overtaken by the Tailhook scandal, which consumed the Navy after 1991. 

I really enjoyed the second part of the book titled “What is to be done and by whom?” You synthesized and compiled a lot of information about what doesn’t work well in the DoD across the private sector, Congress, and appointed officials. As for the length of, say, a flag officer’s time in a particular billet, do you think we should keep them in a job for longer than two years? Did we rotate as often and as quickly in the WWII era and Korea through Vietnam as we do today? Or less? 

We don’t know the answer. Whether senior naval leaders should spend more time in specific billets is a matter for debate, but there is no doubt that the sum of their experience as operators, bureaucrats, and leaders far exceeds that of people from outside of the defense enterprise. 

The MRAP is a fascinating case study on getting something done and done quite quickly. Personality (SECDEF Gates) and process seemed to meld. Gates demanded bi-weekly meetings I believe. He made it his highest priority. Absent a war or something else that drives national attention, for a bureaucracy the size of ours, is this the best we can hope for among the thousands of decisions, distractions, and other priorities? That is, prioritization matters. And some things – or  many things – are not going to get solved. 

The MRAP story is not black and white. While many believe it took senior direction to get the MRAPs because of problems in the acquisition system, the real problem was one of requirements – that is, the senior Army and Marine officers did not want to buy the MRAPs. Their experience and analysis told them that, as soon as the United States was out of Iraq, their investment in the MRAP would be wasted, and the military would suffer long-term damage because of the misallocation of resources to a program that, while saving lives, yielded no strategic benefit. These officers were out of synch with the Bush II Administration. The President wanted regime change in Iraq, and he did not want to acknowledge that the war was a political and military mistake, which made him deaf to recommendations to change course.

At the end of the Iraq War, the military leaders who slow-rolled the MRAP proved correct as nearly all of the MRAPs, purchased at great cost, were abandoned in place in Iraq, and the United States failed to achieve its political objectives. At the same time, far too many service personnel suffered grievous injuries or worse from improvised explosive devices. There are no heroes or villains, but perhaps a more honest discussion of the war between civilian and military leaders would have allowed the United States to mitigate the long-term damage of the Iraq War. 

Are we done with the age of an Admiral Rickover? A singular juggernaut by sheer force of will that can create an entire military culture that lives on for decades? 

In our book we use the example of nuclear-powered submarines to show how difficult it is for each of the services to recognize technological innovation that threatens their existing culture and hierarchy.

When we think about Admiral Rickover’s legacy, we focus on nuclear-powered carriers and submarines that have set an unparalleled standard of safety by never having a reactor accident, and we recognize the importance nuclear-powered vessels play today to performing vital naval and national security missions. What we forget is that Rickover needed incredible support from political and military leaders, starting with President Truman, whose initials were welded on the hull of USS Nautilus, President Eisenhower, whose wife launched Nautilus, and Admiral Burke, who supported both Rickover and the Office of Special Projects that developed the Polaris missile within the Navy.

Admiral Rickover was innovative, brilliant, and hardworking – a true American original. That said, he would never have been able to make the progress he did if it were not for 40 years of unwavering support from the support from the Oval Office, Congress, and the naval leadership.

You each get to change the current DoD Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution process. What would you do? 

We believe PPBE gets a bad rap, largely because of the association with McNamara and because, as we discuss in our book, the average observer does not realize that each service does the process differently. We probably should make modifications to speed up the process, which generally takes two years to just plan and program each budget before the White House submits its budget to Congress. That said, at its essence, PPBE is a process that tries links budgetary choices to national objectives. The alternative appears to be allowing the services to create their own wish lists without reference to what the Administration and Congress believes is necessary or what the other services are doing.

We think if you want to make meaningful changes, you have start with the requirements and acquisition processes – i.e. deciding what you need and what you will buy. If you get those two questions wrong, no amount of budget wizardry during PPBE is going to save you from the consequences of poor choices made at the start of the process. 

Today, how would you characterize the morale of the DoD civilians and military members you regularly come in contact with? Are they frustrated with some of the issues you’ve raised in your book?

The United States is fortunate to have so many gifted entrepreneurs interested in contributing to national defense. A great number of them, particularly from startups and tech, are justifiably frustrated with how slow the process is to adopt new weapons. The problem is that they have very little understanding that the obstacles against which they struggle are the result of Congressional limitations. Fundamentally, too few people from the private sector share Harold Brown’s realization that the military is answerable to the American people rather than stockholders and cannot simply operate like a private firm.

How would you propose we build or mentor a politically astute officer?

An investment in education would probably help. There simply isn’t time to create such officers in PME, and the quality control is also lacking. Anand is struck by the contrast and influence of the well-educated officers the Navy had in the 1970s and 80s. The Navy made a conscious decision to educate a “Fletcher mafia” among gifted line officers and then send them to specific offices in OPNAV – the same goes with the Strategic Studies Group (SSG) alumni. These same officers then went on to major command and many become flag officers. Ultimately, cultivating defense intellectuals among the officer corps requires considerable expenditure of time and money. Hoping they will find time to develop intellectually in their spare time only make sense if you have made the initial investment to develop the appropriate aptitude and skills.

For each of you, what are three books you recommend to readers after they have picked up your book? Or any books you think anyone working in the DoD should read today in light of our current challenges?

There are two classics we would recommend. The first is Alain Enthoven’s classic, How Much is Enough, to figure out how to reconcile quantitative and qualitative methods of making defense choices. As we discuss in our book, Enthoven and his fellow “Whiz Kids” always claimed analysis was only a tool for aiding judgment, but they failed miserably to create a productive discourse with their military counterparts.

The second book everyone should read is Graham Allison’s Essence of Decision. Although the subtitle of the book is Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, it has limited utility for illuminating that particular historical event now that most of the relevant U.S. documents, and even some of the Soviet and Cuban records, are declassified. Rather, the greatest strength of Essence of Decision remains Allison’s analysis of how important decisions are made in our national security establishment, particularly his model of “bureaucratic politics.” 

Are you optimistic or skeptical that we see any consequential defense reforms for the better in the next 5-10 years?

Andy Marshall created the discipline of Net Assessment because he wanted the United States to make different choices without the external stimulus of a military disaster or defeat, which is the usual way militaries embrace innovation. Marshall wanted Americans to rethink what they needed and why rather than simply wasting money replicating existing forces whose utility might have declined. Marshall first made his case back in the 1970s, and by the 1990s, he realized few people in positions of responsibility were listening, which contributed to the gradual irrelevance of the office he established in the Pentagon.

The premise of our book is that at some point in time the nation will decide it needs to rebalance or even reshape the defense establishment. This may be because we reach some limit on resources (fiscal, technological, human, etc.), or it may be because of a reconsideration of the threat. Whatever the reason, inspiring lasting change within a complex social organization – whether a bureaucracy, a private firm, or even a military service – is anything but easy, particularly when the entity has been spared the worst consequences of poor decisions for too long. That is precisely the time, we argue, to remember that it is less costly to learn from other people’s mistakes than to make your own. We still believe the country can learn from its history, and our leaders should know the relevant information when making their decisions.

Dave Oliver is a retired admiral who also served in the Pentagon for Presidents Clinton and Bush, and spent more than a decade in the defense industry. He was one of the founding members of the American College of National Security Leaders.

Anand Toprani is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Policy at the U.S. Naval War College.

CDR Christopher Nelson is a career intelligence officer, graduate of the U.S. Naval War College, and regular contributor to CIMSEC.

All views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the U.S. Navy or Department of Defense.

Featured Image: The Pentagon, headquarters of the Department of Defense. (Department of Defense photo by Master Sgt. Ken Hammond, U.S. Air Force)

Quality from Quantity: The PLAN’s Road to Achieve American Skill via Size

By Matthew Hipple

The United States Navy holds up quality as the firebreak against the People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) dominant fleet size and overwhelming industrial capacity. But the development and maintenance of professional skills to fight wars, build ships, and maintain fleets requires material, time, and people – in a word, quantity, for which the PLAN holds the undeniable advantage. The cliché that “quantity has a quality all its own” improperly frames the advantages conferred upon America’s PLAN adversary by the size of its navy and its various supporting enterprises. Quantity is not merely an attribute with which to bury one’s opponent; quantity pragmatically applied provides individuals and entire professional classes the opportunity to cultivate and cement quality. Without the opportunity afforded by scale, the U.S. Navy will fall behind an adversary with a world of opportunity to explore new skills, new systems, and grow its force-wide professionalism. The potential qualitative impact of quantity shows at every level – from the shipyards to fleet training for individual sailors.

The Maritime Industry and a Nation’s Maritime Character

The Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) recently assessed that the China’s shipbuilding industry fields 232 times the shipbuilding capacity of the United States, representing almost 50% of total global shipbuilding capacity. To stark quantitative differences like these, the U.S. Navy responds, “in many ways our shipbuilders are better shipbuilders, that’s why we have a more modern, more capable, more lethal Navy.”

An unclassified slide from the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) highlighting differences between U.S. Navy and PLA Navy shipbuilding capacity, ship count, and overall tonnage. (U.S. Navy graphic)

Unfortunately, these snapshots of quantitative position fail to account for the rate of qualitative improvement required for China to achieve this feat of material and professional development – from backwater to backbone. China’s modern shipbuilding behemoth is only 20 years old, the result of a deliberate Chinese Communist Party (CCP) campaign of maritime expansion begun in response to the US Navy’s Summer Pulse 2004 exercise when China represented only around 10% of global ship production. In the time between LCS program initiation in 2004 and the final mission package reaching initial operating capability in 2023, the CCP revolutionized an entire industry and supporting professional class. Meanwhile, 20 years of mismanaged shipbuilding plans – have left American shipbuilders without the demand needed to sustain itself, its professional community, or meet naval demand. John Konrad of GCaptain estimates that making “an American shipyard professional takes about 3-5 years.” Although the communal professional improvement of China’s shipyard workers will take longer due to their extreme individual specialization compared to more broadly skilled Western shipyard workers – the China’s shipbuilding cadre have that opportunity to improve with the scale of their enterprise. And ultimately, specialized workers who exist are superior to theoretically higher quality generalists who do not.

But shipbuilding is just a piece of that qualitative puzzle solved by the scale of China’s maritime industry. There is a maritime quality to China’s population that America has left behind. As Mahan notes, “in point of population, it is not only the grand total, but the number following the sea, or at least readily available for employment on ship-board and for the creation of naval material, that must be counted.” Mahan goes on to say that this is a quality of,

staying power… which is even greater than appears on the surface; for a great shipping afloat necessarily employs, besides the crews, a large number of people engaged in the various handicrafts which facilitate the making and repairing of naval material, or following other callings more or less closely connected with the water and with craft of all kinds.”

But even in front-facing maritime industries, America falls behind, as evidenced by the Maritime Administration (MARAD) finally sounding the alarm on mariners available for the ready reserve fleet in a war against a thoroughly maritime nation with a maritime militia and weaponized commercial fleet.

These maritime qualities expand beyond mariners and their supporting maritime industry. From commercial electronics to drone manufacturing, China fields vast and ever-improving professional communities in pursuits related to the development, sustainment, and operation of a modern Navy. Mahan recognized that “such kindred callings give an undoubted aptitude for the sea from the outset.” Even industries unassociated with naval warfare provide those with the character and skill needed to support the fleet. Mahan notes a particularly canny English mariner, Sir Edward Pellew, who, “when the war broke out in 1793… Eager to get to sea and unable to fill his complement otherwise than with landsmen, he instructed his officers to seek for Cornish miners; reasoning from the conditions and dangers of their calling… would quickly fit into the demands of sea life. The result showed his sagacity… he was fortunate enough to capture the first frigate taken in the war in single combat.” China’s multitude industries provides such individuals experienced in the conditions and wielding the skills sufficient to make useful mariners.

The U.S. Navy highlighting contemporary quality recalls Mahan’s unnamed French officer, who after “extolling the high state of efficiency of the French fleet… goes on to say: ‘Behind the squadron of 21 ships-of-the-line which we could then assemble, there was no reserve.’” China certainly displays Mahan’s qualities for a maritime nation’s industrial character and its relation to the sea. The CCP’s groundwork of capacity is now well laid to improve the qualitative muscles at sea, opportunities well in excess of the U.S. Navy’s.

Practice Makes Perfect – But How, When, and With What?

When faced with the ever-growing size of the PLAN, a common U.S. Navy response is that, “they script their people to fight, we actually train our people to think.” While valid, the United States Navy has had its own past struggles with training quality  and scripting. Meanwhile, the PLAN pursues improvements in the quality and accurate assessment of its combat exercises.

Only nine years ago the surface fleet founded the Surface and Mine Warfare Development Center (SMWDC) to repair decades of atrophy in tactical and operational training and expertise. Still, scripts and constraints continued to erode junior officers’ desire to command while early command opportunities decrease. From my own experience, experienced, post-command mentors wondered aloud if seeking command at sea was and is worth the ever-shrinking margin of actual command exercised against a sea of requirements.

Ship for ship, the U.S. Navy is still better than America’s PLAN adversaries. U.S. Navy waterfront leadership’s resentment of administrative leashes indicates they still strive for independence and know what right looks like. However, institutionally the U.S. Navy fails to detect the diminishing opportunities for excellence that its size and those leashes provide, and how the opposite opportunity is now offered to America’s principal adversary. The diminished size of the U.S. fleet against growing operational requirements requires leadership to impose ever greater oversight and ever smaller margins of independence, while the PLAN’s mere size allows broad new opportunities for autonomy and professional growth if they want to pursue it.

To demonstrate these narrow margins, during the roll-out of the 36-month Optimized Fleet Response Plan, my officemates and I at the Surface Forces Atlantic Commander’s Action Group did a loose internal analysis projecting the cycle over time. We determined that scenarios existed in which the margins imposed by the historically low fleet size in 2014-2015 were such that major exercises would suffer. Our limited quantity imposed clear potential limitations on our ability to generate quality – highlighting how a lack of capacity can force greater invasive or disruptive acts to ensure the fleet-level schedule meets basic requirements.

Those invasive acts further limit a commanding officer’s ability to exercise their own judgment and build trust with their crew, as exercised during “CO’s time” – the time underway free of outside direction where a ship’s captain independently sets the agenda and priorities for training or testing. There is no data I know of tracking the availability and use of “CO’s time,” but over the past decade I have heard its absence lamented in greater volume every year. As an operations officer (OPS), my CO tasked me with clawing back what little time I could for us to set our own destiny. Even after triple-stacking requirements just to meet our timetable, I cannot recall ever having succeeded. I have yet to meet a CO or a fellow OPS with a success story on this front. The fleet’s limited numbers often force condensation and scripting of training by necessity, precluding greater independent opportunities for teams to develop and exercise their tactical creativity.

Additionally, the U.S. Navy’s often minimalist approach to procurement shows how limited quantity limits development of quality in arenas like tactical and technical development. As an example, the 10-years-behind-schedule LCS Mine Counter-Measures (MCM) Mission Package (MP) has still yet to certify Full Operating Capability. When I was OPS with LCS Crew 206 in 2020, when the package was only seven years behind schedule, we could only field a single unmanned surface vessel (USV) for limited periods to conduct basic testing – let alone tactical development. This was after the disastrous attempt to base the MCM mission package off the Remote Multi Mission Vehicle (RMMV) – a corner-cutting approach that tried to repurpose a program from 1999 for DDGs into an LCS minehunting system into the 2020’s.

Among numerous other programmatic issues, the paucity of resources always limited the speed of development. The U.S. Navy is making strides learning from that failure on the unmanned front with CTF 59 in Bahrain, USV DIV One in San Diego, and a new approach for 4th Fleet. Nonetheless, the US Navy remains well short of needed manned surface vessels. As the qualitative lag in the MCM MP caused by a paucity of USV assets demonstrates, the same applies to manned surface vessels. But unlike the U.S. Navy, the PLAN has nothing if not extra ships, ordnance, and unmanned systems to train and experiment with.

July 24, 2020 – The crew of USS MANCHESTER (LCS 14) conducts USV training. (Author photo)

Our Advantage Is Our People – If We Can Get Them To School

Finally, the ultimate advantage of the U.S. Navy against the PLAN is that its sailors are better on their feet. But to be better improvisers, they need training they can stand by – a lesson learned during the lost decade replacing in-person schools with CD-based SWOS-in-a-box and online GMTs. While the U.S. Navy has greatly improve the availability and quality of training today, getting to this training demands adequate capacity: enough ships to fulfill fleet requirements while giving COs and crews the space to learn and enough sailors to cover the watch while shipmates are at school. The lack of the former is discussed above, and the 22,000 gapped at-sea billets underscore the continuing lack the latter.

With overtasked, undermanned ships – a force cut to the bone against ever-increasing global demand for conventional maritime forces – ships are caught in a Catch-22: they need to send their sailors to school, but the persistent demands of security, engineering, maintenance, administration, domestic fleet tasking, and the like means there are very few sailors to spare. Here, LCS shows a world that could have been, had the fleet not hamstrung its future manning with the ill-conceived Perform-to-Serve cuts. For a time, the Blue-Gold model showed what a properly manned command could do- with time for sailors to attend school, watchteams available for a month to fight entire virtual wars in the simulator, opportunity to focus on personal and family health, and opportunities to assist other crews as necessary while training along the way. In our case, LCS Crew 206 sent 12 sailors to train on and test the USV with the prime contractor and Naval Sea Systems Command’s LCS Mission Modules program office (PMS-420) in Panama City. Properly resourced, these well-trained and well-practiced sailors achieve feats like USS Charleston’s 26-month deployment.

SAN DIEGO (March 5, 2020) – Sailors stand a simulated watch on the bridge of the Littoral Combat Ship (LCS) Integrated Tactical Trainer (ITT)-2B at the Littoral Training Facility on Naval Base San Diego, March 5, 2020. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Kevin C. Leitner)

Unfortunately, contemporary manning gaps have made proper resourcing of any manning model a challenge. Geography also exacts an asymmetric toll: While a San Diego-based warship takes a month to cross to the Western Pacific and another month to return, a PLAN vessel can steam around Taiwan to conduct a Restriction of Navigation Operation (RONOP) on a whim. Across the roughly 425 combatants of the PLAN, that home field advantage grants years of extra operating time, which then provides the PLAN greater opportunity for professional development at every level. Whether that opportunity is properly utilized is another question – but its potential must be recognized.

Quality is Molded From Quantity

Quantity may be a quality all its own but quantity is, in jargon terms, a “force multiplier.” Quantity is opportunity – exposure to new skills, repetition and practice of old skills, and chance to develop both. Quantity is bandwidth – the capacity to cover requirements while still supporting schools, training, technical and tactical development, and innovation. The U.S. Navy may field a relative advantage in quality today but the main adversary fields capacity that enables an opportunity to overtake.

The U.S. Navy’s historically diminished size combined with the constraints necessary to maximize that diminished force’s availability paves a path to relative diminished quality against a PLAN which is growing and improving every day. If the U.S. Navy is truly serious about honing a cognitive combat edge against its numerically superior opponent, then it must recognize, advocate for, and invest in the quantity necessary to cultivate quality. There are no silver bullets for the Navy’s most likely adversary; they are communists, not werewolves. The U.S. Navy is going to need, in laymen’s terms, “more” – not merely to fight the next war, but enough to keep cultivating in ourselves the skills and mindset to win it.

Matthew Hipple is an active duty naval officer and former President of the Center for International Maritime Security (CIMSEC). These views are presented in a personal capacity and do not necessarily reflect the views of any U.S. government department or agency.

Featured Image: October 2023 – Chinese Navy warships attached to a destroyer flotilla under the PLA Eastern Theater Command sail in formation en route to a multi-subject training exercise in East China Sea. (eng.chinamil.com.cn/Photo by Wei Chenping)

Flotilla SITREP: Red Sea Combat and Information Warfare Shortfalls

By Dmitry Filipoff

This month the CIMSEC Warfighting Flotilla will be hosting sessions focused on the Red Sea combat operations, and potential shortfalls in the Navy’s information warfare enterprise. If you haven’t already, sign up through the form below to become a Flotilla member and receive the invites to our upcoming off-the-record February discussions. The full listings for these upcoming discussions are featured down below.

Feel free to visit the Flotilla homepage to learn more about this community, its activities, and what drives it.

_____________________________________
Upcoming February Sessions

Red Sea Combat Lessons

The Navy has been engaged in combat operations in the Red Sea for several months now. These operations have featured air defense against salvos of missiles and drones, as well as a strike campaign against Houthi targets. How is the Navy performing in these operations, and what are the possible lessons learned? Join us to discuss these questions and more as we consider recent combat events in the Red Sea.

Read ahead: What the Navy is learning from its fight in the Red Sea,” by Geoff Ziezulewicz
_____________________________________

Navy Information Warfare Shortfalls

The Navy is heavily dependent on effective information warfare capabilities to be effective. Yet this warfare area may be evolving at a pace that outstrips the Navy’s ability to adapt. What are the Navy’s shortfalls in building its information warfare community? Do fleet commands and afloat formations effectively wield information warfare capabilities and authorities? Join us to consider the Navy’s potential information warfare shortfalls.

Read ahead: The Navy Is Not Ready for the Information War of 2026,” by Vice Admiral T. J. White and Rear Admiral Danelle Barrett, U.S. Navy (Retired), and Commander Jake Bebber, U.S. Navy
_____________________________________

Dmitry Filipoff is CIMSEC’s Director of Online Content and Community Manager of the Warfighting Flotilla. Contact him at Content@cimsec.org.

Fostering the Discussion on Securing the Seas.